Meryl Streep’s five favourite actors and how they shaped her
There are now multiple generations of actors in Hollywood who hold Meryl Streep up on a pedestal of her own making, something she couldn’t have envisioned at the very beginning of her own career.
Of course, becoming one of the most decorated performers in the history of cinema is destined to leave behind a shadow that her contemporaries, peers, and successors have either stepped straight into or tried desperately to run away from, but it wasn’t as if Streep arrived on the scene with designs on making history.
It ended up coming naturally across the course of countless phenomenal performances, not to mention a trophy cabinet fit to burst with three Academy Awards from 21 nominations, nine Golden Globes from a combined 34 nods, in addition to a trio of Primetime Emmys and a pair of Baftas.
However, despite cinema being her stock in trade, it was television that introduced one of Streep’s formative influences after she revealed to the Golden Globes that “when I was a kid I used to watch all the time – and liked – Lucille Ball”. Golden Age starlet Carole Lombard was another who captured the imagination, even if Streep admitted that “I didn’t know her name for a long time”.
Despite that, Streep “knew that whenever that woman was on, I liked her”. Naming Katharine Hepburn as another source of inspiration, Streep also mentioned Judy Holliday, the multi-talented actor, comedian, and singer who won an Oscar, Golden Globe and Tony Award during a wide-ranging career that spanned film, television, radio shows, stand-up routines, stand-up routines, and Broadway.
Hepburn and Holliday would coincidentally co-star in 1949 caper Adam’s Rib after the former campaigned for the latter to land a major big-screen role based on the strength of her work treading the boards, so it’s reasonable to expect that Streep will be at the very least familiar to a movie that boasts two of her lifelong heroes.
For a more contemporary counterpoint, Streep said she “idolised Robert De Niro after I saw Taxi Driver,” calling him “the kind of actor I want to be when I grow up”. As chance would have it, the two would eventually work together on The Deer Hunter, which didn’t dampen her admiration in the slightest.
Instead, the star voiced her appreciation for the way “he’s so meticulous and he’s very committed to the moment that happens”. Streep did find it “really very challenging to work with him” but nonetheless deemed the experience itself to be “great”.
On the surface, De Niro doesn’t have anything at all in common with Ball, Lombard, or Holliday, given their vastly different filmographies and skillsets, but each of them served to inspire and shape Streep into the actor she became in their own distinct and unique way.
